Chapter 36 - The Trap at Gibraltar
I moved with instantaneous reflex. Grabbing Vane by his silk tie before the blast doors could latch, I hauled him bodily through the gap, slamming him against the obsidian pedestal inside the vault as the five-ton door sealed shut behind us with an airtight hiss.
"You fool!" Vane shrieked, gasping for air against the cold stone floor. "You think you're hunting them? You've walked right into their abattoir! The lockdown vents neurotoxin into the outer corridors! Their strike team is already airborne!"
"Then it's a good thing we're on this side of the door," Elena said coldly, securing the bank director with zip-ties while I turned my attention to the illuminated screen.
On the live map, a cluster of red dots was converging around the Strait of Gibraltar.
Three commercial supertankers carrying Vance-Delacroix combined freight—worth over two billion dollars in strategic energy resources—had suddenly veered off their international transit lanes.
"They're hijacking our primary supply fleet," I observed, reading the cascading telemetry lines. "They’re forcing a maritime blockade. If those ships are boarded or sunk in the Strait, the Vance empire goes into sovereign default within forty-eight hours."
"That's their game," Elena realized, standing beside me, her eyes tracking the blinking coordinates. "They drain our liquid assets, force us into international court, and strip our legal protection over Lily. It’s Victor’s playbook, but executed on a global scale."
"Not on my watch," I growled.
I pulled out our hardwired satellite uplink, bypassing the bank’s jammed internal systems, and patched directly through to our maritime defense division in Rota, Spain.
"Captain Henderson," I spoke into the mic, my voice cold as liquid nitrogen. "Scramble our escort vessels from Cadiz. We have a hostile boarding in progress at Coordinate 36 North, 5 West. Rules of engagement: unrestricted."
"Understood, Mr. Vance. Interceptors are launching in four minutes."
Elena looked at me, a dangerous fire igniting in her eyes. "How do we get out of this vault before the Compass sweeps the building?"
I pointed to the emergency evacuation maintenance shaft built beneath the obsidian pedestal—a standard escape route required by Swiss building codes for high-security underground vaults.
"We don't go back up to the lobby," I said, pulling an explosive breach charge from my tactical satchel. "We blow the drainage baffle, drop into the Limmat river tunnel, and catch the hydrofoil to our naval airfield."
May you like
Elena checked her weapon, a fierce, triumphant smirk touching the corner of her lips. "I love the way you plan a date, Ethan."
Ten minutes later, the floor of Vault 0-Zero echoed with a muffled detonation, and we vanished into the rushing subterranean waters beneath Zurich, racing toward the open sea.
